Well, I'm bummed. It seems this bit of news has had a cascading effect and a few other directory servers and a result have taken their listings offline temporarily until the Sharereactor situation has been resolved.

Quote:FRAUENFELD (kapo) Due to the suspicion of breach of copyright and trademark laws the cantonal judicial Inquiry department of Thurgau has taken down an Internet-Site that served as a link platform for filesharing offerings. A process concerning these matters against the 25 year old owner from Frauenfeld is underway.

The Internet-Site located in Frauenfeld was online for about 30 months and last had over 220.000 hits per day bevor it was taken offline by the Thurgau officials. The in search engines toprated site worked as a anchorpoint for links to downloads of copyright and trademark protectet games and movies that were offered on the filesharing network.

After a complaint from several large corporations, represented by the swiss association against piracy, the cantonal judicial inquiry department of Thurgau initiated an investigation, seized the servers in Frauenfeld and had the site taken offline.

The responsible owner, a 25 year old swiss proved to be very cooperative in explaining matters at hand. The inquiries continue and will take some time.

Sharereactor and websites like it (such as http://www.bucktv.net) acts as a directory and contains links to files available on the eDonkey peer-to-peer file sharing network. Clicking on one of these links (much like clicking on a hyperlink in your browser) loads the file information into your eDonkey network client (eMule Plus is a good one). Once the information is loaded, your eDonkey network client then proceeds to download the file from the peer-to-peer network.

What makes these directories popular is that they contain links to television programs aired here in the US. So if you were to miss an episode of your favorite show (if you're in the US), you can simply download it and watch it. If you're not in the US, these network would be the only way for someone in a foreign country to watch an American television show. One could think of this as a poor man on-demand television network.

While the majority of these directory sites list television programs and movies, some do have listings for commercial software--such as Sharereactor.

As for whether this is legal or not, I'm not quite sure and perhaps someone else can shed some light. But the general feeling is that since they're only listing file info and not actually hosting the files themselves, it should be legal, which is why these directory sites continue to thrive on the net.

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